| Glass artist Jane Bruce takes a break during the installation of the exhibit “A Visual Conversation,” which she curated, at River House Arts in Perrysburg. (Photo: Enoch Wu/Sentinel-Tribune) |
PERRYSBURG – Jane Bruce appreciates the breakthrough made by the artists who launched
the studio glass movement 50 years ago in a garage in Toledo.
She also knows that the idea of an individual artist creating works made of glass
didn’t spring from a vacuum. Harvey Littleton, the catalyst behind the first
glass workshops in Toledo, visited a French craftsman who had a small glass
blowing operation. And the French painter Maurice Marinot who worked extensively
in glass within a factory setting.
"What the Americans brought," Bruce said, "was a joie de vivre, a
freshness and vitality."
That anniversary is being celebrated at the Toledo Museum of Art, which is hosting
the Glass Art Society Convention next week, a major exhibit of glass "Color
Ignited: Glass 1962-2012" and in exhibits around the region. River House
Arts, 115 W. Front St., is hosting "A Visual Conversation," curated by
Bruce, through July 19. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. through 6 p.m.. Call (419)
874-8900.
In Bruce’s native England as elsewhere, if one wanted to be a glass artist, one was
trained to engrave glass or to design pieces that would then be blown in
industrial glassworks.
But one of Littleton’s students came over to England when Bruce was in school and
talked about the development of small furnaces that enabled a single artist to
work, just as a painter or ceramicist works, to be a maker, not just a designer.
Bruce was studying to be a filmmaker. In 1969 "I started blowing glass and that
was the end of that career."
Glass is a "fascinating material," she said. Glass is all around – windows,
glasses – yet easy to overlook.
"What glass is so great at is the transmission of light," she said.
Paula Baldoni, who owns and operates the gallery with her husband William Jordan,
called on Bruce, her former teacher at Ohio University, to curate a show for the
River House Arts in Perrysburg.
The result is "A Visual Conversation" featuring both three-dimensional
works in glass and two-dimensional work in other media by Bruce and six other
international artists.
Bruce said she when approach to curate the show, she wanted to do something different
than just displaying glass, especially given the wealth of glass on display
during the summer in the area.
"I wanted to show a number of artists who don’t just work in glass," she
said. The focus is the dialogue between the different media.
"I wanted to show a different side of the artist," she said.
That’s evident in the work Sydney Cash, whose work was being installed on Wednesday.
It has geometric panels of glass that has abstract designs engraved on it. A
light shines from above, creating shadows of the design. Cash employs similar
designs on his paintings, one on canvas and another on a sheet of glass.
All seven artists, except Judith Schaechter, have both 3D and 2D work on display.
Schaechter does large scale installations using glass, that are impractical for
the confines of the Perrysburg gallery. Since one of her pieces is included in
"Color Ignited," Bruce felt it was appropriate to include just her
prints.
Bruce also has work on display in "Color Ignited" as well as glass and
painting in "A Visual Conversation."
The other artists included are:
• John Brekke, who uses fanciful images of snakes, rabbits and swallows, that evoke
ancient myths. He is, Bruce said, concerned "mark making," creating
images whether on glass or on canvas from thousands of tiny strokes.
• Irene Frolic, whose figurative glass pieces explore relationships, while her
drawings explore her personal history as " child of the Holocaust."
• Natali Rodriguez whose rounded blown glass shapes are echoed in her drawings.
• Michael Rogers’ glass encases an image of Buddha in a clear glass hive engraved
with images of bees.
Bruce also met Dominick Labino when the Grand Raids artist and chemist visited her in
the gallery where she worked in the 1970s. He’d been directed to her as one of
only two female glassblowers who could create large-scale pieces.
She later the returned the favor in the 1980s when she brought her students from Ohio
University to his Grand Rapids studio.
Bruce felt it was important for students to know the history of their medium, and
Labino was a major figure in that history.
As a chemist and artist, "Nick was extremely important to the beginnings of the
glass movement."
